#394 Dimension- Alice Munro
This was a hard story to read. An emotionally oppressive
marriage ends it the murder of three children. Lloyd was insane, getting there
slowly, while Doree seemed happy at first, but as it is in this situation,
she couldn’t reason with herself a way to get out.
“No matter how worn out she got with him, he was still the
closest person in the world to her, and she felt that everything would collapse
if she were to bring herself to tell someone exactly how he was, if she were to
be entirely disloyal.”
Her fears seemed to be dead-on. When they had an argument
and Doree spent the night with a friend to give it some space, he took that as
betrayal, and killed their children: “I wanted to save them the misery…the
misery of knowing that their mother walked out on them.”
In her emotional recovery—if a person can really recover
from something like this—she decided to go visit him in prison. “It was almost
like seeing a ghost.”
He was more worried about his own soul--“Peace. I arrived at
peace and I’m still sane”—then the souls of his children. He wasn’t contrite or
apologetic, just interested that he, himself was getting better. I guess that’s
the true definition of psychosis…you murder three people, and make it all about
yourself.
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